How to Lose a City in Ten Steps; Part Eight: Election Season 2.0

By now, the city is among the most dangerous in its state. Restaurants downtown are having trouble attracting diners from the suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods unaffected by the crime spree. Nearby hotels are also losing lodgers at a rate too fast to measure. Opulent department stores that once attracted shoppers by the thousands are finding their aisles emptier and emptier. In short, the city’s commercial district is dying.

This terrifies the councillors for obvious reasons: less enterprise in their respective districts means less tax revenue for the city as a whole. Without these tax dollars, how can their salaries be paid? When the municipal elections roll around, many find that they have unexpected primary challengers. Wondering how on earth this can be, as each has been in office for well over a decade and have the partisan machine backing them, the answer quickly comes into view.

A shocking tally of the illegals has seemingly decided to become civic participants. With those forged credentials, they managed to find a spot on the voter rolls. Of course, significant help came from various political activist organizations, but the result is the same. Several of the councillors, including those whose actions indirectly built this new segment of the electorate, are tossed out of office by staggering margins. Even the few who tried to reach out to the illegals are canned.

It turns out that the councillors’ positions on any given issue were not the reason for their defeats. They lost for the simple reason that their ethnicity and cultural background was not the same as the illegals’. The solidarity movement which began when the first waves entered the city has been built into a political force that not even the most seasoned of ward heelers can reckon with. As the local demographics have changed, so has the political landscape.

The xenophobia of the disenfranchised natives, especially those shafted blue collars, is at an all time high. Most of the illegals regard these people in an exceptionally low manner, so the bigotry flows both ways. Impoverished racial minorities are hit particularly hard; the illegals now feel free to compete with them for government and community resources, breeding the sort of collectivist hatred encountered only when social stereotypes meet financial depression.

What does the new status quo at city hall have to say about all of this? See step eight.

A shocking tally of the illegals has seemingly decided to become civic participants. With those forged credentials, they managed to find a spot on the voter rolls…

…It turns out that the councillors’ positions on any given issue were not the reason for their defeats. They lost for the simple reason that their ethnicity and cultural background was not the same as the illegals’.

There are ZERO instances – ABSOLUTELY ZERO INSTANCES – of such happening in modern America. It’s all over the conservative blogosphere that it’s happening, but NOT ONCE is there any proof given other than “I just know it’s happening”. Can you show me ANY proof that there has been significant voter fraud (not voter registration fraud, but voter fraud)? NO, YOU CANNOT. What’s sad is that you’ve bought into the right-wing echo chamber for so long that you literally cannot imagine that there isn’t significant voter fraud regardless of the utter lack of evidence showing such.

Your lack of objectivity is showing, Joseph. It makes me wonder if your articles on Barbara Jordan and Cesar Chavez were a smokescreen.